PROGRAMME AND ABSTRACTS - Università degli Studi di Messina

methodological questions of how could we really put a border between “secular” and
“religious”, if we really could.
Vladimir Bahna, Institute of Ethnology, Slovakia
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Tue 15 th , 15.00, Classroom 6
Myth, Ritual and Conceptual Blending. Mircea Eliade and Cognitive Science of Religion
Myth and ritual are central aspects of religious traditions and important objects of scientific
study of religions. In many cases myth and ritual appear to be together in (strong or less
evident) correlation. For Mircea Eliade the connection between myth and ritual was one of the
fundamental ideas. Already before him the correlation between myth and ritual was the matter
of interest in the study of religions (e.g. B. Malinowski or the whole Myth and Ritual School),
but Mircea Eliade went a big step further. For him a ritually re-enacted myth detaches the ritual
participant from profane time and re-enters him to the sacred time. In other words the ritual
enables to experience the myth. Based on findings about conceptual blending this paper will
argue, that Eliade's particular idea about the connection between ritual and myth can be
explained by cognitive processing. Conceptual blending is the ability of human mind to
integrate two or more conceptual arrays of different domains as inputs into a novel conceptual
array whose frame structure draws selectively from the frame structures of the inputs. The
inputs in our case are the myth (remembered story) and the ritual (perceived sequence of
actions). The aim is not to re-evaluate Eliade's “eternal return” concept, but to show that we
should and can integrate cognitive science in to the study of religion.
Wed 16 th , 9.20, Classroom 13